<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>when the sun is coming though, you fill my head with you by ImberReader</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903036">when the sun is coming though, you fill my head with you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImberReader/pseuds/ImberReader'>ImberReader</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire &amp; Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>All rolled up in a package of Roommates to Strangers to Roommates (upgraded), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And Pining that will grow straight into Yearning, F/M, May contain traces of pizza and late night conversations, Mentions of grief on the horizon, Today's forecast: Definite chance of Hurt/Comfort (emotional and physical), We can also expect Light Angst, Who would have thought it'd be so effective?, With two adults finally actually communicating</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:06:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,153</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903036</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImberReader/pseuds/ImberReader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An unexpected visitor arrives with a summer storm, and Jaime's past and future collide.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>198</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>when the sun is coming though, you fill my head with you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaomiGnome/gifts">NaomiGnome</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Fashionably late, here is my story for lovely <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaomiGnome/pseuds/NaomiGnome">NaomiGnome</a>.</p><p>Her prompts were delightful and as follows:<br/>1. College AU with lots of pining and a little bit of jealousy on Jaime's side<br/>2. Brienne gets hurt/ injured and Jaime panics but also takes care<br/>3. Jaime is flustered over Brienne</p><p>I tried to incorporate all three of them, at least in part. I hope she and you, dear reader, enjoy!</p><p>This fic would not be what it is without my Three Musketeers, even if it'd somehow actually get completed without their never-failing encouragement and input, editing and downright hoarding me toward the document like a herd of anxious sheep that I truly became at some point. Also, much love to my personal Zorro for her love and support in these trying times! (Yes, I am very lucky side kick to various amazing heroes of the ages.) Thank you so much, truly, to them and the most amazing hosts &amp; creators of this fic exchange from bottom of my heart.</p><p>Title taken from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8inJtTG_DuU">Bloom</a> by Paper Kites, which, along with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0fDe8a6Oec">Pink in the night</a> by Mitski are the mood-setter songs.</p><p>Quick debrief of few terms before we go on!<br/><b>Kital</b> - Essos born Westerosi version of Krav Maga.<br/><b>KLU</b> - King's Landing University<br/><b>KLM</b> - King's Landing Museum of History and Art</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The night she returns, Jaime isn't contemplating the refreshing qualities of the storm pouring its heart out over King's Landing - he's done so enough in his writing and there's something vaguely interesting on TV. But there's a skittering thought of someone who taught him how to love them wholly that spins little, tired circles on the corner of his coffee table, as it always does on nights like this. It is normal, mundane even. </p><p>He startles at a knock some time past nine, because he doesn't remember making any plans tonight and both Tyrion and Addam are more likely to call him over than crash at his perfectly cozy apartment. There's a second knock, more quiet now, almost hesitant, and Jaime stands up to answer it. Maybe his neighbor, Pia, has cooked too many cookies again (and he really appreciates those, if not the eyelash fluttering they're offered with).</p><p>By the time he opens his doors, the person who presumably knocked is already a few steps down the stairs. He does not recognise this tall and broad person, possibly made even larger by the dark raincoat they're wearing, as any of his neighbors, but who would do door-to-door sales in this weather?</p><p>"Excuse me?" he calls out and they stop, freeze even, and that tension jumps into him suddenly, as if there's a jump cable connecting the two of them. Maybe this was a mistake. Though Jaime is confident he can easily lay down flat any assailant, if it comes to that. Hopefully, tonight Addam won't be proven right about Jaime being too cocky of his self defense skills.</p><p>And then they're turning around and a knife he might be able to deflect, but not <em>this</em>.</p><p>"Brienne, what happened?"</p><p>(Now, that's a million dragon question.)</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>When she's sitting on his couch, the raincoat left dripping a cloud's worth of oddly muddy water onto his floor in the hallway, Jaime can see it is much worse than it had seemed beneath the shadows of her hood.</p><p>Her left cheek is smeared with blood and there's a trickle down her right temple.  The first shadows of bruises are forming on her jaw and around her eye, and the way she's clenching her hands in her lap only makes her battered knuckles more noticeable.</p><p>"What happened?" Jaime repeats himself as he sits down in front of her, first aid kid between them, "I need to know what to tell the police."</p><p>She finally meets his gaze for the first time since she had hastily looked down to his fluffy, Lannister red slippers embroidered with little gold lions (not the ones she gifted him first Sevenmas they celebrated together, but an identical pair) right after he had recognized her.</p><p>"That's not necessary, I already gave my report," Brienne tells him evenly, but he sees her hands clenching and unclenching as he prepares cotton swabs to clean away her blood.</p><p>"Am I going to have to call them to learn why you're bloody and battered on my doorstep, too?" He <em>isn't</em> angry, still too stunned in some ways to be, but frustration is starting to steep in him and he doesn't want to scald either of them when it spills, far too bitter. (There's been enough burning in their story already.)</p><p>She bites her lip, then half-suppresses a wince, and another as he starts to clean. "There was a mugging. I stepped in." He almost laughs because if there's one thing about tonight that makes sense, it's <em>that</em>. She scowls, as best she can, at his quirked lips before looking out the window, as if distracted by the flash of lightning. He knows her better than that. Or did he, once?</p><p>But then he's not amused anymore, as he sees the length of the gash on her cheek. It's not very deep, rationally he can recognize that, but at the same time he doesn't fucking <em>care</em>. The inhale is stuck in his throat and he tries to swallow a few times, but it only feels like he's choking.</p><p>"You might need stitches, Brienne. I’ll take you to hospital," he says already standing up, because he can't, can't look at her like this and slap a bandage on it and... Do whatever they'd do next. Probably say goodbye for another five years. Or more.</p><p>"No." Her hand is cool and damp on his wrist and as the feeling sinks into his skin, he jolts, like this contact is somehow a livewire between now and the last time they touched. "Please, Jaime."</p><p>He sits down, because she has asked so few things of him. Even less with her words.</p><p>"I can't go to the hospital. At least not tonight. It's..."</p><p>Jaime thinks of how skittish and dimmed she had seemed at the ER all the way back in the first year of KLU when she had taken him there for his broken arm on the night they met, remembers the names of her mother, brother and baby sisters she'd told him once, and nods. "But tomorrow, we're getting it stitched up, even if not at the ER."</p><p>She closes her eyes briefly in relief and her hand slips away from his. It's better that way, because if they're not going anywhere he needs to keep tending to her wounds, but part of him wants to take her hands and warm them between his palms, and tell her something stupid, until she forgets not to look at him and there's color in her face again. Entertaining that thought might distract him from the slimy, pulsing clump traveling between his stomach and throat every time he looks at the cut, but it's dangerous in a completely different way.</p><p>So he jumps off another cliff entirely. "Has the cushy spot as Evenfall Hall Museum’s curator made the champion of Kital go so soft, that you couldn't handle a mugger?" Jaime hopes he doesn't sound desperate to chase even crumbs of what her life in these past few years must've been like.</p><p>"Oh, there were four of them so I would think not quite." There’s a wry, familiar quirk to her mouth, but he cannot focus on it, blanking at her statement.</p><p>"Four. You fought four thugs and at least one of them had a knife."</p><p>"Yes,” she confirms his guess about the weapon, simply. “It wasn't really an option to wait until the police arrived. The girl could’ve been badly hurt."</p><p>"Of course it wasn't, not for you.” He touches her jaw to shift her head a little for better access, tries to focus on working gently, but quickly, and not on the way Brienne’s gaze searches his face, as if looking for familiar landmarks of a land that’s emerging from the mist, before starting to bounce around the room as if she’s been caught doing some forbidden.</p><p>It isn’t working, his thoughts spin around her and not the task itself. </p><p>So, he gives in and muses about the quiet marvel her ‘take no bullshit and give your whole heart’ attitude has instilled in him since day one.</p><p>To think that they’ve once again been brought together by her getting in a fight where she’s plainly outnumbered... He almost wants to laugh - he’d find this too on the nose if it had been plot in his own book. At least this time he hadn’t been there to attempt a heroic rescue, just to get his ass kicked and wrist broken trying to shield her side.</p><p>“You really have not changed, Brienne the Just." He had dubbed her that outside of Dean’s office, before they had both been kicked out of dorms for breaking rules and fighting. That the cause had been saving a teenager from bullies with bats had mattered little, no matter what Podrick and even the police had said.</p><p>"This place has." Her voice is quiet and he can’t tell if it is full of condemnation or wistfulness. He gets defensive, anyway. Stupidly. It’s been five years since they graduated, he has no reason to feel guilty about not preserving it as it had been back when they were roommates, renting together just as another fuck you to the university’s administration. He had no obligation to keep it unchanged as a reminder of the time he had uselessly pined for his best friend, silent from fear of losing her (and he had been <em> right </em> to fear), silent until he had no other words but the ones he couldn’t tell her and scribbling untitled, unfinished poetry on the margins of his notebooks had not been enough, and every creative assignment wound up with <em> blue </em>in it.</p><p>Flipping through these memory pages stirs irritation in him. "Well, soon after you went back, the couch finally creaked its last whine and I had to get a new one, and so on and forth. I didn't, however, repair the hole I punched in the wall during Cards against the Throne and it made for an interesting story in that one 'writer in their natural habitat' article I did a few years back."</p><p>"Yes. I read it." She nods slightly, staring out the window where lightning shatters the darkness. He feels crumbling the same way.</p><p>"Is that how you knew to come here?"  He touches her face to tilt it to the other side now and she leans into his touch so lightly that he has to wonder if she noticed, if he isn’t imagining it. He’s an expert when it comes to creating subtext he wishes to see, when it comes to translating her.</p><p>"Margaery... Likes to keep me updated on what our friends are up to." It’s frustrating, how familiar is her tone when she’s concealing something, like a reflection of a veil which therefore cannot be lifted. </p><p>"Friends. Is that what we are, still?" Could she call them that? Could he? After pressing a kiss to her mouth, slack from surprise, on the pier before she got on the ferry to Tarth and hoping it’d be the start of something <em> new </em> instead of one dull cleave through their friendship, a goodbye that had turned far too permanent. After five years of silence, of wondering if he went too fast or too slow, if it had been his caution or his sudden courage that drove them under. After years of pretending the stream in him that still wished to run to her seas had run dry. </p><p>‘I will call you when I can,’ she had said before fleeing, eyes wide and wild, and then never had. Until she appeared bloody on doorsteps that were once theirs tonight. Was that what friends did, by her righteous books?</p><p>"Jaime..." Her voice dips with weariness and fades off into a sigh, but she meets his eyes and the sadness in hers makes him catch his breath in a completely different way than she has a thousand times before.</p><p>"Jaime," she repeats, stammers, and her hands are doing the clench-unclench and strangle each other dance once more, so he takes one and begins to clean her bruised and beaten knuckles. Her hands, that beat up four criminals just so a girl would go home safe tonight. Her hands, that had wiped his tears and thrown popcorn in his mouth when the movie was boring. Her hands, that he had learned to read her nervousness and her joy from as clearly as her eyes. Her hands that held his world together and redrawn its maps.  </p><p>"You don't have to explain anything, Brienne. Let the bygones be bygones." If only he would be as generous with himself in this regard.</p><p>She flinches a little and Jaime’s quite sure it’s not because of antiseptic’s sting or the roll of thunder which sounds just the next street over. </p><p>"I wanted to see you." This startles him out of the contemplation and he looks up. Her jaw is set now and she stares back at him. Whatever she was struggling with a minute ago, she's decided to fight it, with the same determination that she must’ve faced the muggers with earlier today. Suddenly, he is half afraid it'll leave her just as hurt and regrets saying anything, but he is too selfish to stop her, when she's said <em>that</em>.</p><p>"Not like this," she gestured with her free hand to her face and grimaces, then grimaces again at the pain, "but I did. I've wanted to for a long time. And I've rehearsed what to tell you in my head, but now that I am here..."</p><p>"You don't have to," he tells her again, more earnestly now, because somehow the reasons why don't seem anywhere near as important as the fact she is here and <em> wanted </em>to be here.     </p><p>"But I will.” Her shoulders are squared and she’s staring at him, resolute. There’s no talking her out of this now, but she looks like she thinks she’s about to jump off a cliff, directly onto the rocks. (He knows he’ll try to catch her, but what if she stubbornly sails right past him, again?) Brienne’s hand twitches in his, as if she re-thought holding onto him.  </p><p>“When I went back to Tarth, my father's health had become much worse than he let on. My hands were full with taking care of him and my new job and when he passed away, it should've been <em>expected</em>, but it felt so sudden, so hard. Bloody. I couldn't process it." Her voice breaks a little there and he feels it in <em> his </em> throat, somehow.</p><p>"You weren't an exception. I didn't reach out to anyone. I didn't know how to. 'Hey, I know you have a lot going on and I ignored you for months, but comfort me through my grieving?' I have an outbox full of unsent emails, to you and everyone else. I can't delete them because it feels like an impression of time that's become all blurry in my mind." She pauses there, struggling to swallow a few times, but the impending continuation lingers around them.</p><p>"The next summer, Sansa just showed up at my door. 'I was worried you had died,' she told me and I said, 'no, not me.' And she understood, and hugged me and that was the first hug I had had since his passing and the first time I cried, too. I cried and I cried and got a scolding of a lifetime from her afterward, for bearing this alone.”</p><p>He squeezes her hand lightly, before moving onto the other one. He hates that he cannot do anything for Brienne that had wept a year's worth of loneliness and pain into Sansa’s shoulder, but he can do <em> this</em>, at least. </p><p>"And by then, it felt too late to contact you, especially because I felt in no way capable of untangling what... That goodbye had meant. There was so much, <em>guilt</em>, Jaime. About everything. Was, thankfully. Therapy helped a lot. But you... I've stayed guilty about that. And that's not why I wanted to see you. I’ve just missed you."</p><p>A few seconds of silence foam on the sea of her words and then there's small, muted noise as he drags Brienne into an embrace. She is stiff for a moment, before sagging against him and burying her face in the crook of his neck. "I am so sorry," he murmurs into her hair again and again and feels the slight tremble that takes over her body.</p><p>He continues saying things that he doesn't remember as soon as he says them, because there are no words to express the porous stone in his chest, growing, and he just wants her to know he's here and there was never anything to forgive. Eventually, she moves back and the crying has genuinely not improved how her face looks, but he could swear the reflections of storm clouds in her eyes have faded.</p><p>The pause isn't awkward, but Jaime isn't willing to risk it becoming such, to have her apologize for crying, so he hands her a bunch of tissue, while asking: "Do you know what this reunion calls for?"</p><p>"Surely, not pizza? It's eleven pm, Jaime," she says, with a touch of incredulity, but it's blurred around the edges by warmth and exhaustion.</p><p>"So what? It never stopped us before," he tells her cheerfully and then double checks: "Same as always?" </p><p>She nods, an almost disbelieving smile curling across her mouth, and watches him dial their favourite pizzeria. (He likes to say it's one of the reasons why he hasn't moved and Addam tells him he's the reason the place stays afloat and both are bold lies.)</p><p>And then he is telling her just that, sharing a funny story of how Tyrion almost got banned from the place, and of other things that have not changed, and of the ones that have. When the doorbell rings, Jaime has to scramble for his wallet because he forgot to prepare and he shoves probably way too many bills into the delivery man's hands as a tip, in his rush to come back to Brienne.</p><p>The next few hours blur by with long-overdue conversations and laughter and some tears, too. He tells her he gives lectures on knighthood and honor in legends and songs at KLU, more because he loves to talk about the subject and argue about depiction of Kingslayer than any other reason, and Brienne shares that she’s here to negotiate terms for lending some items to KLM for an exhibition. They share large and small pieces of their life, even manage to match up their top three best and worst new history theories and books of their favorite Golden Age heroes, and as the storm has lulled down to the last pitter-patter of rain around three am, so has Brienne sunk onto resting against his shoulder. In the light from TV that is running music videos  from some years back, she looks warm and glowing softly, in pinks and blues, and most importantly - at peace.</p><p>"Brienne," he calls quietly and she looks up at him after a moment, sleepy and trusting, and part of him wonders if she could hear something <em>clench</em> inside of him at that moment, but it's not a cruel grip, it's more like pieces of something have been finally put together and pressed into their rightful places.</p><p>"We need to get you some fresh clothes and you need to sleep."</p><p>"Oh." It’s so quiet that he feels more than he hears it.</p><p>"I didn't think I'd stay that long," she admits softly, sitting up and blinking owlishly at the clock.</p><p>"What did you think would happen?" Jaime asks, half teasing and even more curious.</p><p>"I wasn't sure if you'd open the door, much less invite me inside. Maybe that you'd patch me up and we'd talk and then I'd be on my way back to the hotel. And to be fair, I didn't even think much, I just... somehow walked here in a daze."</p><p>"Well, you're here now and you're going to sleep." He's never been very good at being stern, he is usually the one burrowing under the walls others put up (even if they're for his sake) and showering people he cares with everything they even as much as glance at. But she's a lot of firsts (and onlies).</p><p>"I can take a taxi to the hotel, Jaime." </p><p>He knows she's saying it just because she feels like she should, because if she had been set on leaving, she'd be putting her raincoat on already.</p><p>"I have a spare bedroom, as you very well know, and you're staying here. Please."</p><p>She yields. "Okay."</p><p>That's all he needs to begin bustling around, picking out some spare clothes and toiletries, and Jaime is quite proud of how quickly he gets it all put together and places it on the bed that had been and is now again briefly hers. If she notices the changes to the room, or the way her Blue Knight poster she didn't take with her is still there on the wall, she says nothing. Suddenly, he's very grateful he moved her forgotten varsity jacket to the corner of his own closet.</p><p>"Thank you," she tells him and it feels perfect and unearned, so he takes a step closer, not knowing what to say, but "thank <em>you</em>" is what comes out and it's right as much as it's not enough and he tells her good night, the blue of her wide eyes rolling through him like a river running toward the sea.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>It's a good thing that it's Sunday, because he's not sure he'd wake for any alarm. The fact he blearily blinks at the bright window around 10am is possibly a miracle, or perhaps his routine of jogging before twelve pm paying off in an unexpected way.</p><p>(If his students can laze about during summer, so can he.)</p><p>He tumbles out of bed, almost literally, seized by the fear that Brienne has woken up at her usual early hour and quietly left, with maybe a note on the table that contains her number, but might as well not. But the puddle from her raincoat is still there, as is its cause, and Jaime is flooded with relief.</p><p>Her bedroom is quiet, so he goes about his morning routine quickly and starts preparing some food and coffee for them both. By the time hers (black and cooling, <em> the exact opposite of you </em>he used to say and now he thinks it's good she had never recognized his horrible flirting attempt) is waiting for Brienne and the scrambled eggs are ready to be served, Jaime has heard her slip out of the room and head to the bathroom, then the shower running. But he still isn't prepared for the sight of her walking in the kitchen, wearing his clothes and a soft smile, her hair still a little damp.</p><p>He doesn't know where to look because he's never found his apartment as boring and old as in this moment, when all he has wanted to look at for a decade (and missed for half of it) is here, content, warm and so very close. With his T-shirt, slightly too small at the shoulders, accenting her arms and pants riding low on hips, leaving a bit of exposed skin when she stretches. Suddenly, the memory of seeing her win Kital championship and being thankful for not having to hug her <em>immediately</em> is very fresh.</p><p>Jaime puts in truly heroic efforts on plating the food and making casual small talk about something on the radio (because there's always some kind of subtle noise going on, silence makes for blank space that eats his thoughts and his words) and hopes she doesn't notice him flushed or the way his gaze darts to and from her constantly, touching her lips, the curve of her ear peeking through the curls, skimming down her arm or seeking a glimpse of her knee poking out from around the table. He shouldn't, really, but it's so comforting to confirm she's truly here and catalogue in the daylight all the little ways she's changed.</p><p>Her hair is shorter now and he thinks it suits her just as well, and there are tiny stars nestled in her lobes since she has them pierced now. There is ease to her, somehow, and light, even through visible exhaustion from the long night before. More than there used to be and Jaime wants to see it play through every prism, known and new, of her.</p><p>But he cannot avoid looking at the changes for the worse, too, though most come from last night's fight. The bruises are dark and her lip is swollen and the patch on her cheek is prominent.</p><p>"I think I should check the cut, see if it really needs stitches," he tells her as he begins to clean the table and she inhales, as if to sigh, before standing to help him. It's almost ridiculous how easy it is to shuffle around the kitchen with her, and truly absurd how much he wishes it to be his every morning.</p><p>Afterward, they move to the couch again and he carefully removes the bandage on her cheek, something loosening in him with relief at the sight of the red line that doesn't seem to have bled any further or swollen up. "I think a butterfly stitch would be enough."</p><p>She exhales some tension and, later, when he has carefully applied the stitch and they’ve embarked on a quest for freshly baked goods, let’s go the rest of it.</p><p>"It's not that I'm afraid of scars, not much to ruin here." Brienne gestures at her face, as they’re wandering down Baelor street and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to not gobble down his whole boot right there, proclaiming her face is his favorite one in the whole world. "But I can't imagine going to a hospital without spiraling, even five years later." Her voice dims at the end and her gaze swims down the street, almost unseeing. So, he takes her hand and squeezes it, just like he would have done in the ER. Her focus anchors to him again and Brienne's smile tells him she understands.</p><p>That is how they spend the rest of the day, mostly hand in hand and drifting around King's Landing. Some of the places they visit are their old favorites, some he thinks she'd love (he’s right), some they stumble upon and discover that day.</p><p>Sunset has breathed its last faint purples and oranges into the sky when they come home - that is, return to his apartment - and Brienne tells him she must go back to her hotel. Jaime wants to do nothing more than tell her to stay, but instead he asks: "Will I see you tomorrow?"</p><p>"Do you want to?" There's an uncertainty in her tone that would be almost offensive, if it wasn't borne of hyper-awareness of the hurt she had caused, frankly, to both of them.</p><p>"Yes, of course." Always.</p><p>"I should be done at the museum around six, if you can-"</p><p>"I’ll pick you up," he interrupts her with a wiggle of eyebrows that makes her laugh, honest and loud and all Brienne.</p><p>"You couldn't."</p><p>They've had this conversation before, he remembers. And just like then, Jaime doesn't think she knows just what he meant.</p><p>"I’m strong enough," he tells her and hopes that, finally, finally he will get the chance to show it. That he can hold her and lift her, whenever she needs it. Even when she cannot carry the weight on her shoulders with a straight back anymore. Relying on others has never been easy for her, but she came to him last night and he wants to prove to her it is worth it. </p><p>"We will see about that," she replies and then bites her lip with a sudden flush in her face, which makes him guess that at least eventually she must've understood what he had implied back in Uni.</p><p>"We will," Jaime promises with a grin and packs her off into the taxi, because she refused to let him drive her and he's starting to understand better that his famous stubbornness does more harm than good, when it comes to her boundaries and outposts built by solitude. </p><p>And when he is sitting on his couch later that night, mind less on the movie playing on the TV than the one replaying events of last twenty four hours, and his phone blips once, twice with '<em>Good night, Jaime.'</em> and '<em>I look forward to tomorrow.'</em> he thinks there are no do-overs in this life, but sometimes you're granted another chances to do something <em>right</em> and he wouldn't care if this is only one in his life, because it's the one that matters.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>It's Thursday morning and her flight back to Tarth is at two pm. If he is going to tell her that his bag is packed and there's a ticket burning in the back pocket of his jeans, the time is now.</p><p>Yet, for once in his life, Jaime is at loss of words. He could probably <em>write</em> a few hundred about this feeling, of the imagined tingle of sparks on his tongue and the smell of smoke where cinders lay waiting to start a fire that burns everything down or becomes a welcoming hearth, and some of the speeches he has thought of, too. But saying them is different.</p><p>Brienne is drinking coffee on the opposite side of the table, smiling in her cup as she watches sun gild the still wet rooftops. (It had stormed again last night, when she had stayed over because of an unwisely started movie marathon, and he had laughed that the Stormlands girl was bringing storms with her, again.) They've spent every day together after she's done dealing with Blackfish (who hasn’t lost his soft spot for her since her time of internship at KLM, despite his grumbling over her growing stubbornness), and what little pretense of moving on he had maintained for the last three of the five years they’ve been separated has melted in her sunlight. Or she's made him fall in love with her all over again.</p><p>Either way, instead of making up for failing her back then and being a truly good friend that will be there for her through everything, the golden egg of chance fallen into his palm now thrums with the possibility of loving her right, for as long as she'd have him, if she would at all.</p><p>What if she doesn't? What if this is the one thing their friendship can't bounce back from (again)?  What if he loses her just as he's so freshly, so vividly getting used to her presence again, just because he couldn't keep his mouth shut, or at least for a while longer? They’ve avoided talking about that goodbye on the pier, aware that even acknowledging it means they have to see that conversation through, so Jaime has little to go on in guessing the damage of half-baked confessions.</p><p>But the what ifs run endlessly and inexhaustible, all the way back to the first time he had wanted to kiss her, back in sudden spring downpour of their first university year, with her head tipped back to the raindrops and distant lights making her profile something he wanted to turn into poetry and yet keep all to himself. It would've been so easy to reach up and gently turn her head toward him, taste the rain turning sweet from her smile, and maybe so much would've been different. </p><p>Yet, here and now, Brienne is humming softly to a song on the radio and washing her coffee cup, glancing at him now and then, and maybe that's the thing. The way she looks at him, sometimes when he thinks he won't notice and sometimes openly. The way she'd invite him in her space, touching his arm or grabbing his hand to bring his attention to something and then not letting go, or resting her head on shoulder as they watch a movie. He had kissed the top of her head last night when she had done so and then startled himself into panicked awareness, but she hadn't moved an inch.</p><p>In a way, it had been an answer to an unspoken question in itself. They do specialize in not saying things, after all. But Jaime’s not made for silence and he thinks he finally sees the bridge between words that can be written and the ones that can be said. </p><p>"Brienne," he calls her as he stands up, and she looks at him over her shoulder with a furrowed brow. He wants to smooth it out with his thumb and the thought pulls him closer to her. "Brienne." </p><p>He takes the half-dried cup from her hand and puts it on the counter and now he's got her attention, fully. She turns around in the narrow space he's left for her to face him.</p><p>"I've got my ticket and my luggage ready, if you'd like me to go to Tarth with you."</p><p>She blooms into a smile, open and unreserved, and he thrills, as always, at the thought it wasn't sunlight that coaxed it into opening, but him. "I was actually going to ask if you'd like to come to Tarth for a while, before the semester starts."</p><p>He lets this unexpected encouragement propel him even closer to her, backing her against the counter, and he'd swear her gaze flickers to his lips. "There's another thing."</p><p>It’s not a now or never thing, but it sure feels like one. She meets his gaze steadily, but Jaime feels her hand clench the edge of the countertop next to where his arms bracket her in. He could count her freckles at this proximity, but he will have infinite chances after this. (He hopes so.)</p><p>"I know I already kind of botched it once, but there's something I would like to try again." </p><p>Brienne inhales and he hesitates, waiting for rejection, but when it never comes, he raises on his tiptoes, reaching to touch her face and then-</p><p>She meets him midway, maybe even one third of the way, because somehow he's <em>not ready</em>, and her lips are soft, softer than he remembered, and there's none of the windswept shock from their first kiss. Her hand finds purchase first in his shirt, and then wrap around his neck when there's no more space between them, and he goes from cradling her face to gripping her hips, breaking the kiss to lift her on the counter even if he's now definitely bound to tiptoe for the rest of this. (What a wonderful price to pay.)</p><p>Unfortunately, he's brought back to ground by a clink when Brienne's cup is pushed back into the sink by its owner's lovely ass. They simultaneously peer at it, thankfully not shattered, but definitely chinked. "Well, that's one way to make you think of me every time you use it," he grins up at her, and gets rewarded with another kiss for his cheekiness and a more hands-on knowledge of the cup's assaulter.</p><p>"Just to clarify, you didn't actually botch it the first time, but if you'd like to keep making up for it... Go ahead," she says as she presses kiss to the corner of his mouth, and he smiles so hard she might hear his jaw crack at this proximity.</p><p>"Just don't say you didn't ask for it, later," he tells her, and she quirks eyebrow at him in a challenge that he truly can't back down from.</p><p>Needless to say, they're almost late for their flight and there isn't much unpacking done on the first day. (He had booked a hotel, but there are no regrets about not using it.)</p><p>That day, she tells him she’d felt like she could burst from joy and fear all at once when he had kissed her on the pier. Her unspoken wish had felt recklessly granted in the spur of emotions at their parting and she had feared the bubble would burst, when he would realize he still only saw her as a friend. He finds that ridiculous and proceeds to give her an extensive list of proofs just how absurdly much he’d liked her back then, trading each example for one of Brienne’s own, and in the end, they’re laughing at how little has changed and how oblivious they both had been.</p><p>The month passes quickly and he gets a chance to remind her he's strong enough again and again, from playful wrestling in the waters of a secluded Tarth beach to when she brings him to her father's grave and he has to carry her sobs with him for rest of his life, but it's nestled next to the quiet way she says thank you afterward and together, they sound more like healing. </p><p>He also falls in love with Tarth itself. The museum is impeccably maintained and he loves to spend afternoons there, distracting Brienne from her work and enticing her in showing him various nooks and crannies not known to most people. (And if they use some of them for their own delightful purposes, well, no one has to know.) He is charmed by the cliffs and the sapphire blue waters, the gull cries overhead that remind him of his childhood in Casterly Rock, but her cottage is far warmer than anything he ever knew back then. Jaime befriends people around the island, not with his name or even dashing grin, but through the fact he’s making Brienne happy. He finds their concern and affection for her endearing in turn. And when they sit on her porch, drinking lemonade and the sunset too, with their fingers tangled, he thinks this must be what laying foundations to a home feels like. </p><p>By the end of the month, even the thought of separation is hard and he's honestly so close to writing a curt email informing the dean he's canceling his lectures due to personal reasons that he has it drafted in his head already. Still, Jaime knows she'd be upset at him upending his life like that, so he goes back to King's Landing, and if he takes more absences than he should, it's really nobody's business. (Well, it probably is someone's, but he hardly cares.)</p><p>Loving Brienne long-distance <em>isn't</em> impossible because he’s already got his Master’s in that, but every day is a sweet torture of picturing her filling the spaces he wanders in, when he could very much be where she is. By the time Sevenmas rolls around, they’ve already decided that once this academic year is through, he’ll be moving to Tarth and focusing on his writing, flying back to King’s Landing only for a month to give a much more compacted version of his lecture. </p><p>His students, of course, somehow learn of this and some are sorry to see him go. A few even make comments that 'wasn't it enough to take him off the market, did she need to sweep him off to the other side of the country, too' and he's absolutely delighted at the imagery. </p><p>Brienne is much less so, when he tells her that evening over video call, but he manages to convince her to see how amazing the concept of him being the maiden fair, swept away by his noble knight, really is. As much as one can convince Brienne to believe anything but what she chooses to.</p><p>When her vacation starts, on the first days of summer break, she joins him in King’s Landing for a few days before they embark on a trip that runs after a red thread of myths and legends across Essos and Dorne. The moment she steps over the threshold, it feels like she’s brought a sense of <em> home </em> with her, somehow tucked behind her belt or weaved into her smile. He welcomes her thoroughly.</p><p>The next morning, he wakes slowly but early. She's shown him how to love a great many things, but mornings have never seemed so valuable as they are when he gets to watch sunlight turn her hair and lashes into its sisters.</p><p>He marvels at the way he used to dream about this - sweet, juvenile and sometimes filthy dreams of loving her transparently, but he had not been even close to what it’s like in reality. For a short while, Jaime had felt so utterly <em> cheated </em> that he couldn’t have this earlier, almost a whole decade lying like a mountain half braved, half avoided, between the moment of starting to like her and finally telling her so. He told her as much, one sunny morning on Tarth, and Brienne remained quiet for a long time, before shaking her head. </p><p>“No. We fell in love back then, but we weren’t the versions of us that knew <em> how </em> to love each other yet. Maybe we would’ve learned together, in another four years side by side, but I think we got where we’re supposed to be right on time.”</p><p>Jaime had wanted to argue, but found that he couldn’t. He had loved her as the person she was back then, and he’s sure every him in these years would have loved every her, but if it had taken him so many years to plant one silent, confusing kiss on her, before letting his wounded pride and respect for her assumed wishes close the gate between them, was he really ready to love as he ought to?</p><p>So, though sometimes he still thinks of all that could’ve been, his only regret now is that he unintentionally left her drifting in oceans of grief alone and there’s nothing he can do to truly make amends for it. He hopes giving her a lifetime of happiness might come close though.</p><p>"Jaime, I'm trying to sleep, stop thinking so loudly." Her voice is heavy with sleep and he presses kiss to her forehead in lieu of good morning.</p><p>"Stop being such a good listener then," he chides her, though it's like telling the sky to stop borrowing its blueness from her eyes.</p><p>"What is it?" she asks, shifting so she can look into his face from where her head is resting on his chest.</p><p>"I've always liked this apartment," he starts and this isn't how it's supposed to be, but some ideal, scenic place across the sea feels so unnecessary when she’s perfect and here, in his arms, right now,  "but I think I love it the most when it's ours."</p><p>"What do you mean, Jaime?" She furrows her brow and he smooths it out gently, trying to put into words the world she's built in him, before cupping her cheek. </p><p>"We used to rent it together," Jaime explains, "with both our names on the lease." Realization begins to dawn golden and bright in her eyes and he feels her holding her breath, with the way she's pressed against his body. His thumb brushes across the slight raise of scar. He hopes he’s there to see when it has vanished completely.</p><p>"Would you like to make it Lannister-Tarth fortress again?" Now he is the one not breathing, because he <em> knows </em> the answer, but in that moment there’s only his heart thundering in his ears and the ever-changing ocean in her eyes that has trickled into him, filling every crack and every indent that seems to have been waiting just for her. </p><p>"Yes, Jaime. Yes. I love you." Her hands cradle his face and then she’s leaning in to taste the same words off of his lips. There had been a touch of sea salt in their very first kiss and few tears add a whisper of salt to this one, too, but somehow it’s fitting, so very them.</p><p>There are some things that are right, and then some that are <em>right</em>. And then there's loving Brienne. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading and joining me on this truly daring endeavor that this fic has been for me! Congratulations and much love to every fellow writer who has taken part in this event, now that I am allowed to join you in resting. Thank you for all your hard work!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>